03/24/2015

Part Two of the party shenanigans

I managed to get not one single photo of the large cake or the party food. There wasn't a chance! Kids clamoured for food before it was completed and then it was just about focusing on singing 'Happy Birthday' before the cake was destroyed...luckily I also made cupcakes so I have something to show for my efforts.

The cake itself was made using my standard chocolate cake recipe. I've made it so many times its foolproof. The cake is moist and chocolatey and always gets the requisite 'oh, I can't believe it's vegan' response from the adults. The yellow icing on the top is a reworking of an icing from 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World'. I say reworking because I suspect that the dairy free and vegan spreads (margarine) in the UK is very different from what the book suggests and I can not bring myself to put in vegetable shortening as they suggest because all I can think of is Trex and, to me, it's simply a vegetable equivalent of Lard. As the spread is so soft I also do not add the soya milk they suggest. It would become icing soup if I had done that. The yellow is courtesy of some natural turmeric based food colouring and the chocolate horse head is a 'milk' chocolate from a British based company called No Muu. They will be getting a dedicated post but a quick sum up is that their chocolate is dairy free, organic and fairtrade and tastes great.

In terms of food served we focused on familiar foods that just happen to be vegan so there were crisps (plain and 'bacon' flavoured, biscuits (Oreos and Jammie Dodgers, sandwiches (hummus, marmite, peanut butter and jam), carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, chips and (seriously) the BEST sausage rolls made with the original Sosmix. Nothing fancy or highbrow, they were all just three and four year olds after all. In the end I quite enjoyed it. Minimal cooking really, no hired entertainment, no bouncy castle and one party game before they discovered the 'loop' that goes through our hall, lounge and kitchen. Who needs entertainment when you can run round and round shrieking.